This is the week that I should be getting ready to travel to western North Carolina to teach my Beyond Blank Pages class all next week at the John C. Campbell Folk School, but unfortunately, the class has been canceled due to low enrollment. I’m sure that COVID and time of year (winter in the mountains) had something to do with it, but I am pretty bummed about it.
I loved teaching at the Folk School right before the pandemic shut everything down in March 2020, and I was looking forward to going back this time. Though I’m disappointed, I am trying to look at it from another point of view. I feel like the universe is allowing me to make space for something different — something bigger. This cancellation frees up a lot of time over the next few weeks, making space for me to contemplate, to create, and to bring something new and different into being.
I’m starting by finding a new way forward with the Beyond Blank Pages class. With the in-person class canceled, I am now free to make it into an online event and to do something that I have yet to do with any my virtual classes — take a truly deep dive online with a community of fellow creative folks. I’ve done a range of classes and workshops online, but nothing like what I am imaging for this class.
The Folk School class would have been a 6-day retreat where we delved deeply into taking a blank journal or sketchbook and turning it into a singular, visual work spending at least 6 hours a day painting, gluing, writing, making, and creating in, on, and between the pages. Many of us can’t take that kind of time away from our schedules to indulge in such an in depth experience, even if it were virtual. So, as I plan, plot, and scheme about how to bring this experience into the virtual realm, I have to approach it differently than anything else that I have done before, and I think that I have struck upon a way to do it.
I am envisioning a hybrid concept where there will be prerecorded content as well as live sessions. I don’t have all of the details worked out right now and things may change, but I’m thinking of an 8-week class where two prerecorded sessions are released each week with approximately an hour of instruction. Participants could work at their convenience for however long they feel during the week exploring the ideas shared and taking things in individual directions. There would be at least 4 live sessions scattered throughout the 8 weeks where we can come together as a creative community, share our creations, ask questions, and generally support each other.
The class would be all encompassing as it would truly explore nearly everything that I know about journaling and working in books. It’d be as if you took all of my classes and mashed them up into one big class, so we’ll explore how to take all of these ideas, materials, and techniques and bring them together into a single set of pages, and I hope that you can join me.
Though I don’t have all the little details worked out right now, I do know that the class will launch March 15th, 2022, and I’ll be opening it up for registration as early as this week if I can get everything ironed out.
But I wanted to let you all know what I was thinking about for the near future and to see if this new adventure is something you might be interested in.
Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for more info over the coming days.